Electronic distribution of information has gained importance with the proliferation of computing devices and has undergone a tremendous upsurge in popularity as the Internet has become widely available. With the widespread use of the Internet, it has become possible to distribute large, coherent units of information, such as books and magazines, using electronic technologies. Books distributed using electronic technologies are commonly referred to as electronic books (“eBooks”). Various entities make eBooks available for download over ordinary Internet connections, such as broadband and dialup connections.
One problem today is that digital content may be displayed and read on a variety of different computing devices (e.g., computer monitors, portable digital assistants (PDAs), pocket computers, specialized eBook reader devices, etc.), with a wide assortment of different display conditions (e.g., screen size and resolution, font type and size, margins, line spacing, etc.). Typically, digital content is structured as virtual frames presented on a computing device. In the context of the Internet, content is arranged and delivered as “web pages” that may be rendered on the computing device by a rendering program, such as a browser. Such web pages are created using a markup language that describes the structure of the content on the page, and provides instructions to the browser regarding how to render the content. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. Web pages can be designed with instructions to assist in the rendering of the content on different devices. But, since the display conditions vary widely, HTML simply attempts to render the content in the best way it can. In some cases, content flows off the bottom of the screen or to the right of the screen. This may not be a problem for a browser-enabled computer with a normal display, as the user can easily scroll to the off-screen content.
However, a growing number of devices are employing other types of displays, such electronic paper display technology. An electronic paper display is one that has a high resolution (150 dpi or better) and is bi-stable, meaning that it is capable of holding text or other rendered images even when very little or no power is supplied to the display. One exemplary electronic paper display that may be used is an E Ink-brand display. One shortcoming of such displays is a comparatively slow refresh rate. For such displays, scrolling to off-screen content may take an unacceptable amount of time from a user experience perspective.
Some dedicated eBook reader devices use such electronic paper displays. As a result, traditional approaches to providing digital content to client devices are proving to be less effective, or in some cases, entirely ineffective when delivering to eBook reader devices. Accordingly, there remains a need to improve the way digital content is delivered to and rendered on such eBook reader devices.